AI was supposed to kill her business - it brought her back to life instead

After 16 years in business, Kim Speed was getting bored. The entrepreneur who had transformed from corporate creative director to successful brand builder was feeling stagnant, looking for "something new that I'm interested in."

Then AI arrived. And everyone said it would destroy small businesses like hers.

Instead, it made her feel like superwoman.

"As a small business owner, it has made me feel like superwoman," Kim reveals. "It has helped me to research, expand my learning, build my business, become more visible and stay visible."

But Kim's AI transformation wasn't just about tools and efficiency. It was about rediscovering the excitement of being a beginner again, the thrill of mastering something that could revolutionize everything.

"I think it has revitalized my business. It's revitalized me in that this is something new that I'm interested in... This changed everything for me."

While other entrepreneurs feared AI would replace them, Kim discovered it could amplify them. While others worried about authenticity, she learned to train AI to sound exactly like her. While others saw threat, she saw the biggest business opportunity since the internet.

Discover how Kim went from AI skeptic to AI evangelist, why she argues with her AI (and threatens to fire it), and how artificial intelligence became the renaissance her 16-year business desperately needed.

Timestamps:
[00:00] Introduction and Welcome Back
[00:51] Kim's Background and Brand Building
[01:20] Impact of AI on Small Businesses
[04:06] Challenges and Misconceptions About AI
[06:45] Effective AI Tools for Business
[13:28] Human Connection in Business
[18:25] Future of AI and Business Adaptation
[20:51] Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

From Burnout to Brand Builder: Reinventing Through AI

Speaker 1 0:00

Welcome back. This is part two from Rice on the Ashes. I'm back here with Kim. Speed is an awesome human being, entrepreneur who has walked through fire, came back and thought, don't really like that, I'm going to launch a business, and she actually stumbled on her ideal client, kim. Thank you very much for joining me once again. You're an awesome human being. Can you tell everybody a bit where you've come from and get everybody back up to date? For those people who missed it, go and check out the link going back at part one, because you're going to want to read it or listen to it. Read it and listen to it depends if you can at least listen to it and get to know kim also. Her details are going to be on there to reach out to her for any further communication. She's on linked LinkedIn and her website as well. Kim, how are you? And welcome back. Can you catch everybody up please?

Speaker 2 0:55

Yes, thanks, baz, great to be here. So, for those that haven't heard, I am a brand builder. I help entrepreneurs leverage their years of experience, of knowledge, skills and talents and passions and help them turn that into a brand that actually gets them clients.

Speaker 1 1:07

I love that A brand that actually gets them clients. It's a rarity sometimes. I can assure you, the journey you've had is quite phenomenal, but what I want to touch on now is changing the landscape of not just entrepreneurial and coaching and marketing and all the above, but also corporate sectors, and it's a subject of artificial intelligence. Kim, I know you're dying to dive into this, but how do you, in your own words, how do you see AI changing the face of marketing and branding? How has it affected you personally?

AI as a Superpower for Small Business Owners

Speaker 2 1:49

first, so, as a small business owner, it has made me feel like superwoman. There's so much that it has helped with. As a small business owner. We have so many things that we do, we wear all hats and we have to learn so much, so it has helped me to research. It has helped me to expand my learning. It has helped me to build my business. It has helped me to become more visible and stay visible, which is a really big thing for a brand.

Speaker 2 2:32

A brand needs to be out there and be seen and not selling all the time. It's not about that, but you have to let people get to know. You Think about it like dating You're going to meet somebody and you want to get to know them. For some people it takes longer and for some people it doesn't, but you need that period of time where you can share with people your knowledge who you're about. Artificial intelligence has helped me and helped me help clients to be seen and get out there with more ease and less overwhelm and I know that sounds strange because people are going oh, artificial intelligence and the brand doesn't seem to go together, but it does.

Speaker 1 3:25

I'm going to share something with you. A very good friend and advisor in my world. His name is peter swain, so shout out to peter. He told me artificial intelligence is not a tool, it's an intelligence and it should be tracked as such. Now there's a lot of people going now, going what? It's a tool. I use it for this and this. It aids for things. It can enhance the learning and the knowledge, but it is still an intelligence. It's there to learn.

Speaker 2 3:59

Yes, we're learning and it's learning from us.

Speaker 1 4:02

Correct Amazing. So in that is this when people come to you and say artificial intelligence, what is the challenge that most people come to you with? What's there like, oh my god, I don't know how I'm doing this. What's that journey like for them when they come to meet you?

Speaker 2 4:20

so the number one thing is I can't use artificial intelligence. I can't use AI to create content or for my business, because it doesn't sound like me or it feels it feels slimy because I'm trying to trick people. But it really has nothing to do with that. It's all about using it to hone your messaging. Like you've got information, how can you make it so that people understand it better? How can you be more effective and more efficient? That's what we can use AI for.

Speaker 2 4:56

We can use AI for a lot of things in our business, like automation and imagery and we'll get into imagery but like just to organize your business and be able to communicate it to somebody so that they get it that you're talking to the right people and you're talking to them in ways that they want to know. That's what amazing features that I have seen using AI and branding and building your brand and helping you get out there and helping you feel confident about what you're saying. So there's amazing ways you can do things to train your AI to understand you and be able to sound like you and you can have conversations with it. I was laughing just the other day. I actually was arguing with the stupid thing. Yes, I finally said you have not been thinking and go back in this conversation and review and I'll be back.

Speaker 1 6:05

I threatened to fire mine. I threatened to throw mine out the window and I call her Grace. I threat. I threatened to fire mine. I think throwing mine out the window firing and I call her grace. Yeah, I won't go down that rabbit hole because we'll be here for a very long time. What in the? There's many forms of artificial intelligence.

Speaker 1 6:20

Yeah, and we're talking the tip yeah, what's the most effective that you've seen for your specific clients? It doesn't have to be chat, gtp. There's so many of them. What is the one you predominantly use to achieve the outcome for your clients?

Speaker 2 6:43

There isn't one. I use a combination of them, but I do suggest starting with chat GPT, just because it's. I think it's easy and you can start to have conversations and you can start to feel it out. The other one, though, that goes really well with it, is perplexity. So I love being able to research. I know that you can do that in chat GPT, but I love the effectiveness of perplexity for research.

Speaker 2 7:13

I have taken clients through doing analysis of their competitors and they have all of a sudden realized competitors that they didn't even know about and things that they could. It just opens this world of things that they could be doing and thinking about for their own business and looking at competitors maybe or not even competitors or other companies that they admire and figuring out how they speak to their clients and customers. That I can do in perplexity. Then I can bring it into ChatGPT and use that to build, use that knowledge to build and I would say brainstorm and ideate with chat GPT to come up with great ways to what some new offers that you might have or that you should be thinking about or different ways that you should actually approach your lead generation.

Speaker 2 8:09

These kinds of things used to take forever. Even just researching the competitive landscape was. It took forever, and you used to have to hire somebody and pay them a lot of money or spend a lot of your time, which, as a small business owner, you don't have, so you didn't do it. Now it's whoa, as a small business owner, you don't have, so you didn't do it.

Speaker 1 8:30

Now it's whoa, the first time. What you're speaking now is awesome, because the first time I did this and I was like, oh, I can do this. Yeah, it changed the whole, my whole business model. Everything changed within literally 14 hours. And when you realize that you can reverse engineer things that have already been proven, that are successful, that someone else has done but not in your voice, not in your way, not with your knowledge or your experience, suddenly like, holy, oh, I can do this I know, and at first it feels really sneaky. Yeah.

Speaker 2 9:09

And like you're doing something underhanded and you think, am I supposed to be doing this?

Speaker 1 9:16

But it's a cheat sheet. Yes, essentially, and you've got to use this correctly. So, for those people who go, I'm going to go and research all this. Prompts, learn prompt. Yeah, competitive and comprehensive, prompt engineering. It's not taught very well out there in a lot of places. There are some are very good, there's some that are not so good. So use your due diligence. Please don't go and run out and just go.

“You Are the Prompt”: How to Train AI to Sound Like You

Speaker 2 9:43

I can prompt and do the rest of it and don't just take anybody else's prompt verbatim, like you can use it to test out, but start to create your own yeah, yeah, because someone once said to me you are the prompt.

Speaker 1 9:58

That's interesting, and what he meant by that I spoke to him yesterday, actually, crazy enough, what he meant by that was it's got to be your concept, your knowledge, your way of speaking into the intelligence. So it starts to attract, extract your data and missing points that elevate the direction and the instruction of what you're telling the artificial intelligence yeah and I was like okay, my head has just exploded, how do I do this?

Speaker 2 10:32

And here we are again. I think the machine is training us again, yeah.

Speaker 1 10:37

But that's just it. So, when you're implementing some of these strategies with your clients, kim, what are some of the results that you're having and you've seen in this landscape compared to five years ago, six years ago, where you were like I've got to pay $100,000 for a market research? You had to sit on his ass for six months and then tell me this is what he's found, because that's essentially what they did.

Speaker 2 11:03

There's a sense of confidence that comes because there's somebody validating, there's somebody showing them various ways to do it, giving them options, showing them different ways to show up. I just like the whole brainstorming thing is amazing and if you open your mind to it and it takes a bit, because I had a conversation, actually with a friend I have some friends that are still in corporate that they don't touch this stuff and they said, oh, I'm too old to learn this and use it in work and I just cringe because I'm thinking, well, then you might as well just shut the door and go. You know, you got to keep. I think this is the most fascinating time. The only other more fascinating time was when we started using computers and that changed everything. But this is changing it faster and even better than at that time. But it's a fast train and get your ticket and get on.

Speaker 1 12:09

Exactly that.

Speaker 2 12:10

Yeah, confidence is a huge thing Confidence in what you say and who you're speaking to, and being able to have more content that you come up with, even for if you want to show up and do these live videos and I know that we just talked about how you can get artificial intelligence to do your videos for you as you, but that's a whole other story.

Speaker 2 12:36

But I've had it do great scripts for people, so that it's not even something that you read, but it's oh yeah, this is what I should talk about Just ideas where, because your mind is so busy as an entrepreneur, you're trying to do things to do that, all of a sudden, they say, okay, let's get creative and make some content that sounds like you and speaks to your ideal client. And sometimes you just need a little help. You need an assistant and it's a great assistant that can help you do that and you start showing up more and people start to see you and, like I said, you're not showing up selling all the time. Yeah, sure, you can make an offer, but I see more people being able to just talk about some of the things that are important to them, show who they are.

Why Big Brands Struggle With Personal Connection

Speaker 1 13:23

They're doing a lot more of that now, because of this and the thing I think switched dramatically, especially in the personalized services like coaching, even service-based businesses, law firms dentists, law people were the first and smartest ones to pick this up.

Speaker 2 13:44

I couldn't believe it. And then I started to get smart and started asking law questions.

Speaker 1 13:49

that I asking a lot of questions yeah, because that I needed one of the things I noticed, especially in this space and this in this subject, was the bigger brands, people like nike, reebok, adidas and a lot of others. Yes, they were using it, but they weren't as popular because they didn't have a personal story. Apple, on the other hand, had a personal story. It had an emotional connection to their audience, their customers, but it's so challenging to try and connect a personal story with a corporate brand. You can't connect a brand story from a bank, or it's very you can, but it's very difficult. Like chase, for instance. Yeah, what's their story? They take a lot of money, they made a lot of money, but they've got no personal story. Very few people know the personal story behind how chase was built. Yeah, it doesn't resonate-year-old story from that. Who made a shitload of money doesn't resonate with the millennial or Gen Z girl guy walking around with their iPhone today.

Speaker 2 15:01

Yeah, it just irritates them.

Speaker 1 15:02

Yeah, exactly that. So what I found was service-based businesses entrepreneurs had a newfound salvation within this market. Yeah, they created a blue ocean, if they're using the correct tools in the correct way.

Speaker 2 15:19

Yeah, this is so true, because this is one of the things that I, like for years, have been saying. We are no longer in a world where we talk about do you work B2B or do you work B2c. There's that is non-existent, especially for a small business. You work h2h. It's human to human. I've been talking about this for years, but it was hard for people to. How do I connect with people? What am I going to say to them?

Speaker 1 15:45

this is date yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 15:47

How do I go on a date? Swipe, yeah, swipe. That's a whole other rabbit hole, yeah that's a whole other AI and that gets weird yeah it gets really weird. Yeah.

Speaker 1 16:02

I love what you're saying. It is human to human. That, I think, has been forgotten in a lot of areas and you were speaking about it. You were trying to tell people they don't buy your product. They buy you or a version of you.

Speaker 2 16:22

Yeah, people don't want to hire organizations or corporations. That's not what they're looking for. And when they do work with those people, they're looking for the individual within that company that they can have a relationship with. They want somebody that knows their name.

Speaker 1 16:36

Yeah, I've experienced this when I've gone to some of the meetings I've been in and they're like who are you? I'm Baz and you all. How do you know our names? Because I do my research.

Speaker 2 16:48

Yeah, and you can use AI to do it faster now. Yeah, put a person's name and find out about them and make them feel like you're interested. It's amazing. All of a sudden they lean in.

Speaker 1 17:03

And that's just it. That's the human connection there. Yeah, suddenly, you've personalized something. One of the best emails you can ever write and I know this because I've done a lot of research is name. I saw you do something. I know you love sailing. Yeah, I'd like to connect with you. Suddenly, they're interested because they know something personal about them. It's not just random Something, so they're going to read it. And all this previous data, which was some of it was right, some of it not so much. Short emails for busy people yes, it worked for a time timeframe, but that trend is now changing. Yeah, and trends within artificial intelligence if you don't get on them, you won't have a business in 10 years.

Speaker 2 17:52

It's that simple yeah, you've got to learn it and you know what I think it has revitalized my business. It's revitalized me in that this is something new that I'm interested in and not everybody's going to be interested in it, but I was looking for that what's going to be interesting and something that I can, something new. I was getting bored.

Speaker 1 18:19

This changed everything for me and what's the future within your business and for your clientele.

Speaker 2 18:30

You're going to be able to use this as a team small businesses. There's going to be so many jobs that are replaced and I know that's everybody's oh my gosh, jobs are being replaced and what are we going to do? There's going to be new jobs and those are the ones that you're going to need to figure out and those are the ones that, if you're a small business owner, if you can figure out how to deliver that or deliver in a way that serves people that are going to have those different roles, you're going to come out on top. You're going to come out on top.

Speaker 1 19:05

I think what you're touching on now is bordering on a genius, because what you're just breaking into now is adapting to the changing lifestyle and the roles of the future industries, because there's not just going to be your predominant industries. Your turn is. You've got healthcare, you've got finance wealth. You're now opening up a completely different sector with different roles but more advanced, which means there's more money and capital going into this. New ventures. Yes, I met somebody the other day. She's going to be appearing on the podcast shortly as well. I met somebody the other day she's going to be appearing on the podcast shortly as well. She just designed a platform to help and prevent bullying and I was like I was bullied as a kid at school. Horrendously, I know thousands, if not millions, of people are going through that now, but AI has made that possible. There is another person in our orbit, kim, that is preventing child harm, suicide. Yeah, because AI has made that possible and the human-to-human connection is also expanding that.

Speaker 2 20:28

It's allowing people that you'd never have a chance to converse with come together as well. So, yes, it's going out there as an artificial being, but then it's pulling in real humans together when it matters most.

Speaker 1 20:47

I love that. Kim, we're nearly at time. Where do people find you? What is the message you want to change the world with, and is there anything you'd like to give to the audience as a gift?

Speaker 2 21:01

Yes, so you can find me on LinkedIn. That's where I'm hanging out probably the most right now Kim Speed on LinkedIn and I'm just going to say keep an open mind and keep learning, don't be afraid, test things out. This is a new world, enjoy it. Test things out. This is a new world, enjoy it. And if you're a business owner, figure out how you're going to use it, because it can make your business explode. And I have a couple of GPTs that I've custom made that help people with their brand. One is discovering who you are and the second one is finding your voice, and I would love for you to give it a whirl and test out this AI and have some fun with it.

Speaker 1 21:56

Where do they find them?

Speaker 2 21:58

I will give you the link and have a special link for your community, Baz Awesome.

Speaker 1 22:03

I appreciate your time, kim. I appreciate your love and what you do for other people. Thank you very much, thank you so much. From my audience thank you very much for joining me. It's you, it's all about you. Please share the message. Inspire somebody today. Remember you are the miracle. Have a fantastic day. See you soon.